The EU’s Galileo navigation system, set up as a competitor to American GPS and much-trumpeted by Remainers, has now been broken since Friday. Users were sent an advisory notice instructing them to avoid the service. Meanwhile Guido has had no problems with GPS-powered Google Maps…

“UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, USERS EXPERIENCE A SERVICE OUTAGE. THE SIGNALS ARE NOT TO BE USED.”

It’s almost a surprise that no-one’s tried to blame Brexit yet, although given that many key parts of the system involve the UK, the EU may already be starting to regret its decision to freeze the UK out. Looks like Europe’s knock-off GPS wasn’t worth getting upset about after all…

Last week Guido said Michel Barnier was lost in space over Galileo, and that his attempts to push the UK out of the satellite project would send costs spiralling for the EU-27 and delay the project even further due to their lack of expertise. Hungary is the first EU country to protest to Brussels – their foreign minister Peter Szijjarto has done a broadcast round today telling the EU to pack it in:

NEW: Hungarian Foreign Minister intervenes in row over UK participation in Galileo satellite project. Peter Szijjarto tells @itvnews it would be ‘irresponsible’ for EU to push out the UK which contributes 12% of budget pic.twitter.com/OaqLPzEdYW

— Libby Wiener (@LibbyWienerITV) May 24, 2018

Losing or not taking advantage of the capacity of what the UK can contribute to the Galileo project, I think it’s rather irresponsible and I don’t really see that that would be in the interests of the EU…

Q: Would you like to see the UK staying in the Galileo programme?

Yes, of course. We understand the UK covers 12 per cent of the costs of the budget of the Galileo programme and I really do think that the security risks that are ahead of the European Union demand a very strong cooperation between the UK and the European Union. I think that giving up the cooperation with the UK on the field of intelligence or any other security aspects would be very irresponsible on the part of the European Union.

That’s Michel told…